Arthur is a six foot human being who lived on Earth in a small house in the West Country up until he was rescued from the planet's destruction by his best friend Ford Prefect, an alien from somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse and not from Guildford as he'd originally claimed.

We'll See Who Rusts First!

We meet Arthur as he lies outside his house, trying to prevent the council from knocking it down to make way for a bypass. He's enraged that a builder came the day before. He'd thought the man had come to clean the windows but he was told that he'd come to demolish his house. Mr Prosser, the person in charge of the demolition, tries to convince Arthur that he was entitled to make any complaints at the appropriate time. Arthur had gone down to the planning office to see the plans the moment he'd found out but said plans were inside a locked filing cabinet at the bottom of a disused toilet with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the leopard".